Stuff about running, from me, your friend, Jay!

After feeling tightness in my right foot for about a week, I went out for a long run on Sunday. My plan called for 16 miles with the last 5 at 7:02. At about 6 miles, the pain set in, and I knew it was more than tightness. I turned around (6 miles from home) and headed back. The pain was shooting through the sole of my foot with every step, but was lessened when I ran on dirt or ran faster.

By the time I got home, I was limping, and I spent the rest of the day hobbling around. After doing a little research, I self diagnosed with Plantar Fasciitis. My mother has been having troubles with this recently, so she and I had a quick chat, and I decided on a plan of action: Night Splint, ice rolling, stretching, stretching, stretching…

It’s now Tuesday morning, and it’s still a little painful to walk, but a noticeable improvement from Sunday.

What’s this? It’s my dailymile training stats page… At a quick glance, I can see my past few weeks of training and perform some simple analytics on how I’m improving. Have you signed up for dailymile yet?

Many of us run and train using music, either as inspiration, distraction or motivation. I’ve tried some things in the past with music and running, and a recent dailymile conversation sparked the idea for this post.

One thing I’ve found useful when trying to increase my speed capabilities is to try to sync footfalls to music. I noticed sometime last year when out for an easy run that a song came on with a BPM (beat per minute) a little faster than what I was running. I naturally sped up to match my foot impact with the beat of the song (left foot on snare backbeat, but that’s just me :)). Curiously, I was suddenly kicking it with a lot less effort. So, I got to using that mass of grey matter I have, and concluded that as I was trying to get faster, perhaps I could use the motivational power of music to help me along the way.

A quick Google search on BPM and running returns a plethora of information, so I’ll cull the cream off the top for you here:

Run2Rhythm has a nice comprehensive site selling music at certain BPMs but they also have a nice guide on how to determine the appropriate BPM and match it to the pace per mile or MpH you want to run.

Of course, if you have a nicely sized music collection, you can do it yourself. Just make sure you have BPMs on all your songs. If you use iTunes, there are a number of freeware utilities that will skim your music library and determine the BPM by song. Once that’s done, simply create a smart playlist and have it load with songs in the BPM range you’re targeting. You can then create playlists for different paces: Intervals, Tempos and LSD.

The big benefit I’ve gotten from this approach as a relatively new runner is that I’ve been able to more quickly learn what a pace feels like and imprint it through music association. It probably helps here that I’m a drummer…